January 2022

by Stephen Alvarez|January 17, 2022February 9, 2022|news, petroglyph, Rock Art

Late last year vandals irreparably damaged a rock art petroglyph panel in Big Bend National Park. 2021 was a hard year for United States rock art with major instances of vandalism reported in Utah (here, here) and now closing the year in Texas. Anyone with information about the incident in Texas should contact the Big Bend National Park Communication Center at 432-477-1187. Detailed view of vandalism in Big Bend National Park, Texas photo via NPS The National Park Service reports that there have been over 50 instances of vandalism to rock art in Big Bend since 2015. Read more at Art News (here) and Texas Monthly (here). At the Ancient Art Archive, we believe that the only long-term solution to vandalism is education. We must build a long term and wide spread appreciation for the images our predecessors left written on the landscape. To that end we have built education...

Dating Rock Art, How Old Is It?

by Joshua Alvarez|January 14, 2022February 8, 2022|36000 BP, age, Altamira, cave art, Chauvet, Europe, France, How Old Is It?, pictograph, Rock Art, Spain

paintings in El Castillo in Spain are more than 40,000 years old, much older than previously suspected

What does it take to understand cave art?

by Stephen Alvarez|January 10, 2022February 21, 2022|20000, age, cave art, petroglyph, Rock Art, Spain

a glimpse into the mind of the paleolithic artist

Meet Dr Joe Watkins PhD

by Stephanie Welsh|January 6, 2022January 6, 2022|Uncategorized

At the Ancient Art Archive, we always knew we wanted the Mural of America stories to be told from an indigenous perspective, so we were beyond thrilled when Dr. Joe Watkins agreed to join our team to engage Native communities in building out each site's archaeological and cultural content.Joe's gentle personality, Choctaw ancestry, archaeological expertise, and decades of experience conducting collaborative work with indigenous communities make him ideally suited for this project. Read on to learn more about Joe and his journey! v Joe, what inspired you to become an archaeologist?When I was a kid, I would spend the summers with my grandmother out in the country on the edge of Cypress Swamp in southeastern Oklahoma. It was kind of fun. We had no electricity, We drew our water from a spring in the back, bathed in the river, and my grandmother cooked on a wood stove. We went to sleep...